OpenX Blog

We were excited to hear that entrepreneurs Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog) and David Cancel (Compete) are using Openads in their latest startup.

Lookery is an ad network for Facebook applications. Advertisers will be able to use Lookery to deliver highly targeted advertising based on Facebook profile data.

Facebook applications have access to profile data if the user agrees during the application install process. This rich source of information could be used to target advertising at “Jazz lovers living in London” etc.

Openads is a good fit for this application. Optimizing ad delivery based on known profile information is a common targeting technique used by Openads users. (Hint: use the source parameter).

We wish Scott and Dave well in their endeavor. They are also looking for a developer with Openads experience so get in touch with them if interested.

Good luck guys!

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Are you using Openads in your business? We’d love to hear from you.

We’d like to introduce another Openads competition winner… Andy from Social Knowledge

OA: Thanks for downloading Openads 2.3 beta and signing up to win an Openads t-shirt! We’re pleased to announce that you’ve won a t-shirt.

OA: Tell us about your websites

Andy: Social Knowledge connects people with similar interests and lets them harness the distributed expertise of focused peer communities. At the heart of all Social Knowledge Networks are people and technology. The participants collaborate and manage their community while constantly providing feedback that is used to shape and extend the features of each peer community network.

Our most popular community is The Fashion Spot.

The communities are provided to the members for free and the costs are offset by the advertisements. We serve around 60 million impressions each month

OA: Have you been using Openads for long

Andy: I’ve been using Openads since 2004, this year I’ve been ramping things up to taking control of my inventory - Openads is an important part of this.

Forums communities have very high page views but very low click through rates. We needed an ad serving solution that can scale but also allows us to keep our costs down, Openads was the perfect combination.

OA: How much time to you spend managing your inventory each week?

Andy: Not as much as I would like. At the moment I’m running a mix of ad networks and direct sales but I’d like to do more to make sure I’m getting the best value from my inventory.

OA: What do you think of the Openads 2.3 beta?

Andy: The new Openads is great because it allows us to use one installation to run the ads for all of our communities; they are each setup as an agency. This provides us benefits of not having to maintain many instances of the software which ultimately saves us money. We are also starting to use Geotargeting and URL targeting to provide more relevant ads for our users to enhance their experience on our communities.

OA: Thanks for speaking with us Andy – the t-shirt’s in the mail.

At the Openads IRC channel (freenode#openads), Noki was showing off his well deserved sticker:

It actually sparked a lunchtime conversation about what everyone has on the back of their laptops. Of course, Openads is well represented in our office. Check out Chris’s laptop:

I just got a new laptop, so I haven’t had time to build up my collection:

I am very proud of the stickers I have, of course:

• Openads. Enough said.
• Documenta (the one with 12 lines). Documenta is an art fair held every 5 years in Kassel, Germany. It showcases interesting art and artists around the world that have been influential over the last 5 years.
• Deviant Art. Deviant Art is a huge community of artists who showcase and sell their art on the site. They also happen to be an Openads user!

I am sure if you shower Oliver with compliments, (or even better - answer some forum messages or submit a patch) - an Openads sticker may make it to your doorstep.

My first job out of college was for IDX Systems Corporation (Now GE Healthcare). IDX was a large software developer, with over 1000 software developers making huge clinical and financial systems for hospitals like the Mayo Clinic and others.

I was lucky enough to participate on the ‘Web Framework Team’ at IDX - which was the pet project of the CTO at the time, Jeff Sutherland. Jeff was well known for his work with Object Technology, and is very well respected in the industry.

Jeff also was part of a group of people who founded the Scrum Development Process, which is an Agile Development Methodology. Basically, Agile Development is different than traditional software development in that there are regular daily and monthly deliverables, and the process is built to incorporate user requirements throughout the development process.

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Online advertising has a place close to the hip pockets hearts of many bloggers so it’s no surprise that there are some great blogs out there to help web publishers make the most from online advertising.

What are your favourite blogs?

Which ones have helped you make the most from online advertising?

The list below is taken from our blogroll but please nominate the ones we’ve missed.

Following up from Tobias’ great post about optimising your site, if you don’t read Read/WriteWeb, then you may not have heard about FoldSpy. Check it out!

Perhaps you’ve noticed… the Openads homepage has a new look today.

Latest blog entries – We’ve added a feed including the latest Openads blog articles to the homepage.

In the wild – Curious to know what others are saying about us? This Technorati blog feed will show the most recently posted blog articles about Openads from around the world.

Our community – We wanted to bring the Openads Community to the front of our website so we’re reporting on the Openads forum members and blog readers.

New Logo – We had a little fun with the Openads logo.

I hope you like the new look. Be sure to let us know if you have any comments, feedback or suggestions.

Hello. My name is Tobias Schwarz (Noki on IRC). I’ve been using Openads for a very long time and I earn my living through online advertising. I’m friends with the Openads team and have been helping out with testing during the Openads 2.3 beta process.

I was pleased to be invited to guest blog on the new Openads blog. I’d like to share my thoughts on how you can optimize your website to generate higher revenue. I hope that Openads publishers will find this useful.

By optimize I mean improving the design of your website so that more of your visitors do what you want them to do. Today, I’m going to focus on the basic tools and techniques for measuring and experimenting with your website design.

This article does not discuss techniques for driving more traffic to your site. We might talk about that another day.

So, go get a cup of coffee and start reading!

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Following great community feedback on the launch of Openads 2.3 Beta, we’ve been working hard over the last 10 days to incorporate these bug fixes into a new release.

As a result, I’m pleased to announce the release of Openads 2.3.35 Beta. This version contains the following important updates:

• Fully functional password recovery
• Ability to migrate geotargeting data when upgrading from Openads 2.0
• Fixed cache problems experienced by people running multiple hosts
• Compatibility for database table prefixes containing capital letters

For full details on the new version, please see the Openads 2.3.35 beta release notes.

We’d be delighted to hear what you think of the new version. It’s your feedback that drives the direction of the Openads platform. So keep it coming!

Download the new version now!

As part of our new focus on the Open Source community (ie. you!), we’ve been hard at work updating the documentation to try and make sure that all the special little tricks that we know about Openads are written down somewhere, so that everyone can benefit from the knowledge.

As part of this effort, I’m happy to announce two new documents in our Technical White Papers section of trac. Firstly, we have revised all the performance tuning tips that appeared in a previous blog post, and have added a couple of extra tips for high volume Openads users.

Secondly, we have written a new section that we hope will help MySQL users get an answer to the age old question: Which MySQL storage engine should they use, MyISAM, or InnoDB?